In early 2023, Matt Wisdom, a local tech entrepreneur known for founding the company Turbosquid — which he had recently sold to Shutterstock for $75 million — pitched New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s top aide on his next big idea: What if the city put QR codes on potholes?
As Wisdom explained it, residents could scan the QR code, which could be put on a cone above a pothole, and get the most up-to-date information on the status of the city’s plan to repair it. The QR code would link to a website Wisdom managed, providing greater transparency into the city’s operations, as residents could easily check whether the city had already scheduled a repair.
The aide, Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montaño, was enthused about the idea, Wisdom later told Verite News. Montaño gave Wisdom the green light to pilot this new project through his newly created nonprofit, the Wisdom Foundation, which would offer its services pro bono to the city.
Wisdom told city officials he would need access to the data gathered through the city’s existing complaint line, the 311 system. Wisdom hoped to get a full picture of the service requests residents were making, so he could develop his own software to process their complaints.
Full access would mean Wisdom would get not only the locations of potholes, or other problems people have reported, but personal information residents entered via phone or the 311 website — such as their names, home and mobile phone numbers and email addresses, which the city does not typically make public.
He got it.
Internal city emails obtained by Verite News show that over the course of several months, the city gave Wisdom and his team access to everything in the 311 system — without any kind of contract or other formal agreement outlining what they could or could not do with the data.
A public records request for contracts with the Wisdom Foundation turned up only a brief, non-binding letter of intent that doesn’t address the 311 data at all, and appears to serve primarily as a software licensing agreement. Even that went unsigned.
At first, Wisdom planned to make FixNOLA, an online database cataloging and updating road and drainage issues across the city. He later developed ChatNOLA, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that could provide a “personalized experience” with 311 services.
Wisdom eventually created Civilized.ai, a for-profit company working under the auspices of the Wisdom Foundation, to develop and eventually sell his new software.
Since Verite News first reported on the project — and concerns raised by city employees — it seems that the Cantrell administration has had second thoughts. At least for now. According to the Mayor’s Office, the city has now paused its off-the-books partnership with Wisdom, citing concerns about data privacy.
“To support the pilot program, Matt Wisdom was granted access to the City’s 311 system to ensure data accuracy in the ChatNOLA platform,” a city spokesperson told Verite News. “When concerns were raised regarding the extent of this access, the City promptly revoked his 311 access. The City is currently working with its Law Department to ensure the appropriate legal provisions are put in place before moving forward with any future collaboration.”
The admission appears to contradict Montaño’s previous claim — as reported by The Times-Picayune in February — that the city put privacy guardrails in place when it partnered with Wisdom.
For his part, Wisdom has consistently denied that he was given access to anything that isn’t already available to the public.
“The 311 data to which we were granted access contained the same resident information that was publicly available through city and government websites,” Wisdom said this week.
While some 311 data is publicly available on the city’s website, the city excludes personally identifiable information from the dataset. The city has committed to not renting, selling, exchanging or trading the personally identifiable information that residents provide when signing up for services like 311.
While it’s possible that much of that information would be subject to disclosure under the state’s public records law, the city typically takes weeks or months to respond to public records requests. And it usually responds with static documents like PDFs, rather than with real-time or near-real-time access to its internal systems.
“This sharing of data and access is a standard practice,” Wisdom told Verite News this week. “We handle all access with extreme care. In fact, in the case of New Orleans, we have applied extra care because the city 311 system has primitive access controls; we wrote specialized code to connect to it in a secure way that more modern cities have already provided as part of their 311 systems.”
Though Wisdom did his work for free in New Orleans, he has bigger ambitions for Civilized.ai. He has previously said he’d like to take what he’s done here and expand it across the country as a business enterprise. And in the emails Verite obtained, he said he has already made arrangements to test his software in other cities.
A ‘sandbox’ of data
Wisdom was first given access to the city’s 311 system – or, rather, a copy of it – in the summer of 2023.
City employees had objected to Wisdom receiving the keys to the live 311 system to test his software. So the Orleans Parish Communication District, which runs the city’s 311 system created a “sandbox,” basically a copycat of the city’s 311 data that he could use for testing without impacting the live data.
But he wanted access to the live system, which he said he would only use on a read-only basis. A systems engineer with OPCD replied that it would not be possible.
“There is not a read-only key that could be given to you to the live version of 311,” the engineer wrote, noting that the only key that could be given to the live system would include writing privileges. So, in the meantime, OPCD instead gave Wisdom and his team access to a sandbox of the city’s 311 data that he could use for the development of FixNOLA.
But a month later, Wisdom replied, copying Montaño, and again asked for an API key to the live data, reiterating that he only wanted it on a read-only basis. He said he needed access because the sandbox didn’t provide new 311 requests as they came in.
“We need to be able to ingest new data,” Wisdom wrote.
Based on the emails, it is not clear when exactly Wisdom was given access, but by the next year, in the spring of 2024, Wisdom and his team were able to ingest new data and run test cases in the city’s live production system. They also had write access, meaning they would have the ability to change what was in the system.
In an email to Verite News, Wisdom said that such write access is not atypical, and that his team made sure to be careful with it.
“In the case of New Orleans, we have applied extra care because the city 311 system has primitive access controls; we wrote specialized code to connect to it in a secure way that more modern cities have already provided as part of their 311 systems,” Wisdom said.
However, Wisdom’s access appeared to rankle some city employees.
City employees previously told Verite News that they were concerned about how Wisdom received access without the type of vetting and legal protections that would be the norm in a contracting process.
It wasn’t just the personal contact information of residents who submit 311 requests that bothered the employees. They also resented the demands Wisdom was making of them. Some employees were expected to regularly meet and communicate with Wisdom. Emails obtained by Verite News show some moments of tension between Wisdom and city employees.
In June 2024, one analyst with the Department of Public Works asked Wisdom not to test his software in the live 311 system, saying that it interrupted her process and workflow. Wisdom forwarded her email to Montaño, telling him that he would be surprised if she had been “distracted for more than 5 minutes collectively.”
Wisdom replied, copying Montaño and other higher-ups, saying that he had already had meetings with “most of the folks on the thread,” and that he had only created a small number of test service requests.
FixNOLA and ChatNOLA officially rolled out earlier this year with a feature in the local paper. At the time, Wisdom said artificial intelligence could help the city to do more with less.
Around the same time, some residents received direct messages to their emails and phone numbers from FixNOLA after logging a 311 request with the city. Wisdom previously told Verite News this was a temporary glitch that was quickly resolved.
But the city has now confirmed that Wisdom and his team did have access to that personal contact information all along.
“The Wisdom Foundation had access to all data associated with 311 requests, including any contact information voluntarily provided by the requester,” a city spokesperson said. “Requesters are not required to provide any personal information in order to submit a 311 request.”
National ambitions
Wisdom never intended to do this work for free over the long-term. He has ambitions to go nationwide with his software through Civilized.ai. A website for Civilized.ai currently shows off Wisdom’s ChatNOLA product on the home page.
“We currently have write access to the 311 data for several major American cities, and this access was provided with no formal legal process or contract,” he wrote.
In emails with city officials, he discussed his working relationship Boston’s chief information officer, saying he had access to the 311 system for that city as well as the city of Chicago.
Verite contacted 311 officials in those cities for comment, but they did not respond by publication time.
Wisdom has continually said that his intention is to bring innovative technology to New Orleans and improve its 311 tools – for free. And that any profit gained from this endeavor will be made by selling the technology to other municipalities.
“My team has put enormous heart and effort, at significant cost, into building something available for free — for those who choose to use it — to make life in New Orleans better,” Wisdom said.
Though the partnership is temporarily paused, the city spokesperson said that the Cantrell administration is open to working with Wisdom in the future.
“Work will remain stopped while system migrations are underway,” a spokesperson said. “However, the City is always seeking to modernize and improve its service delivery and utilize innovative tools to do so. We remain optimistic that a future partnership may benefit residents of New Orleans.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article inaccurately stated that Wisdom asked city officials for “full administrative access” to the 311 system. While emails obtained by Verite News show that he did request broader access than he was given initially, he did not ask for “full administrative access.” The error has been corrected.
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